I agree. We need a radical change (some version of universal basic income comes to mind) that would allow people to safely change careers if their profession is no longer relevant.
This is obviously because the current ruling class can't see what is coming. Historically speaking, the motivation for the elite to support social programs or reforms has been the instinct to preserve social stability, not altruism.
The New Deal did not happen because "the party thought that Social Security and unemployment insurance are necessary for the poor or middle class." It happened to prevent civil unrest and the rise of radical ideologies.
> the fact people having their jobs replace by technology are completely screwed over is a result of the society we have all created together, it's not a rule of nature.
In the past, new jobs appeared that the workers could migrate to.
Today, it seems that AI may replace jobs much quicker than before and it's not clear to me which new jobs will be "invented" to balance the loss.
Optimists will say that we have always managed to invent new types of work fast enough to reduce the impact to society, but in my opinion it is unlikely to happen this time. Unless the politicians figure out a way to keep the unemployment content (basic income etc.),
I fear we may end up in a dystopia within our lifetimes. I may be wrong and we could end up in a post scarcity (star trek) world, but if the current ambitions of the top 1% is an indicator, it won't happen unless the politicians create a better tax system to compensate the loss of jobs. I doubt they will give up wealth and influence voluntarily.
There was no happy and smooth transition that you seem to allude to. The Luddite movement was in direct response to this: people were dying over this. Factory owners fired or massively reduced wages of workers, replacing many with child workers in precarious and dangerous conditions. In response, the workers smashed the machines that were being used to eliminate their jobs and prevent them from feeding themselves and their families (_not_ the machines that were used to make their jobs easier).
If we want to draw some parallel this may trigger a robber baron kind of outcome more than an industrial revolution.
The existence of workable open weight models tips me more toward the optimistic outcome
Butthere's trillions at stake now and that must not be discounted it's the kind of wealth accumulation that can easily trigger a war. (And if you thinkit isn't you can look at the oil wars in the 90s and other more recent resources war bring fought in Europe today.
Expect "gpu gap" talks sooner that later, and notice there's a few global power with no horse to race.
Oh wait, that's not the disneyfied technooptimistic version of Luddites? Sorry.
I disagree. I think it's both. Yes, we need good frameworks and incentivizes on a economic/political level. But also, saying that it's not a tech problem is the same as saying "guns don't kill people". The truth is, if there was no AI tech developed, we would not need to regulate it so that greed does not take over. Same with guns.
Yes, AI text could be considered higher quality than traditional SEO, but at the same time, it's also very much not, because it always sounds like it might be authoritative, but you could be reading something hallucinated.
In the end, the text was still only ever made to get visitors to websites, not to provide accurate information.
I keep hearing this repeated over and over as if it’s a unique problem for AI. This is DEFINITELY true of human generated content too.
People telling lies on the internet is an old enough and well known enough issue that it’s appeared in children’s TV shows. One need only dive down the rabbit hole of 9/11 “truthers” to see how much completely made up bullshit is published online as absolute fact with authoritative certainty. AI is the hot new thing and gets all the headlines, but Scottish Wikipedia was a problem long before AI and long after society largely settled its mind about how reliable Wikipedia is.
Same could be said for the Internet as we know it too. Literally replace AI with Internet above and it reads equally true. Some would argue (me included some days) we are worse off as a society ~30 years later. That’s also a legitimate case that can be made it was a huge benefit to society too. Will the same be said of AI in 2042?
The problem is that people who are laid off often experience significant life disruption. And people who work in a field that is largely or entirely replaced by technology often experience permanent disruption.
However, there's no reason it has to be this way - the fact people having their jobs replace by technology are completely screwed over is a result of the society we have all created together, it's not a rule of nature.